The Born Queen tkotab-4

by Greg Keyes

  Leoff exhaled and pushed his hand through his hair, wincing as he touched the sore spot. "No," he said. "I don't really understand any of it."

  "It will work," Mery insisted.

  Leoff nodded. "I compose more with my heart than with my head, and my heart says it would work if it could be performed, which it can't. That's the problem, you see."

  "I don't understand," she said.

  "You read music, yes?"

  "Yes," she said. "I can play the harp and lute. I can sing."

  "Then you notice that there are three voices, yes? The low, the middle, and the high."

  "Not unusual," she said.

  "No. Quite the norm. Except that if you look closely, you'll see that there are two distinct lines in each voice."

  "I noticed that, too. But I've seen that before, too, in the Armaio of Roger Hlaivensen, for instance."

  "Very good," Leoff said. "But here's the difference. The second lines-the one with the strokes turned down-those have to be sung by…ah, well-by the dead."

  When she didn't even blink at that, he went on. "The upturned lines are to be sung by the living, and for the piece to be done properly, all the singers must be able to hear one another. I can't imagine any way for that to happen."

  But Mery and Brinna were looking at each other, both with the same odd smile on their faces.

  "That's no problem, is it, Mery?" Brinna said.

  "No," the girl replied.

  "How soon can we perform it?" Brinna asked.

  "Wait," Leoff said. "What are you two talking about?"

  "The dead can hear us through Mery," Brinna explained. "You can hear the dead through me. You see? I am the last piece of your puzzle. Now I know why I'm here."

  "Mery?" Leoff turned his gaze on the girl, who merely nodded.

  "Fine," he said, trying to resist the sudden dizzying hope. "If you say so."

  "How soon?"

  "I can sing the middle part," he said. "Areana can sing the upper. We need someone for the low."

  "Edwyn Mylton," Areana said.

  "Of course," Leoff said cautiously. "He could do it. If he's still in Haundwarpen and if we could get to him."

  "Haundwarpen is under siege," Areana explained.

  "No," Brinna said. "Haundwarpen is fallen. But that's actually good for us."

  "How so?"

  "My brother is a prince of Hansa. They won't stop him entering or leaving the city, and they won't ask him questions. Not yet."

  "A pri-" He stopped. "Then you're a princess of Hansa?"

  She nodded.

  "Then I really don't understand," he said.

  "My brother and I are here at our peril," she said. "Understand, it doesn't matter who wins the war. If the barrier between life and death deteriorates further, all of our empires will be dust."

  "What do you mean," Areana asked, "at your peril?"

  "My brother tried to help your queen, and I am run away," she said. "If we're caught, we may well both be executed. That's why we need to move quickly. At the moment, the army here recognizes my brother as their prince. But word from my father will reach here very soon, and we will be found, so all must go quickly."

  We'll do the piece, his thoughts rushed. We'll cure Mery.

  He clung to that thought and shied from the next: Brinna was prepared to die, perhaps expected it, perhaps had seen it. That did not bode well for the rest of them.

  "Well," he said, "we'd best find Mylton, then, and get on with this."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  REUNIONS STRANGE AND NATURAL

  "WHAT NOW, sir?" Jan asked Cazio.

  Cazio stared at the freshly turned earth and took a few deep breaths. The morning smelled clean despite the carnage.

  "I don't know," he said. If Anne's Sefry guards were traitors, Mother Uun probably was, too. If he took Austra to her, they might be walking right into the spider's web.

  But what else was there to do? Only in Eslen was he likely to find anyone who could help Austra.

  "I'm still going on to Eslen," he said. "Nothing's changed about that."

  "I reckon we'll be going with you, then," the soldier said. "The empire is a month behind on our salary, and we've worked hard enough for it."

  Cazio shook his head. "From what I hear, you'll only walk into slaughter. Go back and keep the duchess safe. I know she'll pay you."

  "Can't let you walk into slaughter alone," the soldier replied.

  "I won't get in by fighting," Cazio said, "with or without your help. I'll have to use my wits somehow."

  "That's a bloody shame," Jan said. "You're bound to come to a bad end that way."

  "Thanks for the confidence," Cazio replied. "I think it's for the best. You fellows will just draw a fight we can't win. The two of us might be able to slip in the back way."

  Jan held his gaze for a moment, then nodded and stuck out his hand. Cazio took it.

  "The Cassro was a good man," the soldier said.

  "He was," Cazio agreed.

  "He raised a good man, too."

  They broke camp a bell later. The soldiers headed back to Glenchest, and Cazio and Austra were alone again.

  It was along about midday that Cazio felt a strange, hot wind carrying an acrid scent he had smelled before, deep in the tunnels below Eslen. He drew Acredo and turned on the board, searching. There wasn't much to see; the road was bounded on both sides by hedges and had been for nearly a league. Until now he'd been enjoying the change from open landscape; he could almost pretend he was back in Vitellio, taking a tour of one of the grand trivii with z'Acatto, working up an appetite for pigeon with white beans and garlic and a thirst for a light vino verio.

  Now he suddenly felt claustrophobic. The last time he'd come this way, it had been with an army, and they hadn't much feared bandits; now he realized this would be a perfect place for them to hide, say, just around one of these bends, and wondered if he hadn't dismissed Jan and the others too quickly.

  Of course, that had nothing to do with what he had smelled, which he was beginning to think was an illusion, anyway, just a stray memory of one of the many horrible things he had experienced in the last two years or so.

  He kept Acredo in hand as they went around the curve.

  There was someone there, all right. It wasn't a bandit.

  "Fratir Stephen?" He drew back on the reins and brought the carriage to a halt.

  "Casnar!" Stephen replied. "You're a coachman now."

  Cazio was momentarily at a loss for words. He didn't know the fellow well, but he did know him, and the odds seemed against a chance meeting. And there was that other thing…

  "Everyone thinks you're dead, you know," he said.

  "I expect so," Stephen replied. "The slinders did make off with me. But here I am, fit and well."

  He did look well, Cazio thought, not dead at all. Although there was something about the way he spoke and carried himself that seemed very different.

  "Well," he said for lack of something better, "I'm glad you're well. Did Aspar and Winna find you?"

  "Were they trying?"

  "Yes. They went after you. That was the last I saw or heard of them."

  Stephen nodded, and his eyebrows pinched together for an instant. Then he smiled again.

  "It's good to have friends," he said. "Where are you off to, Cazio?"

  "Eslen," he said, feeling guarded. The whole encounter seemed stranger every moment.

  "You're looking for help for Austra."

  Cazio shifted Acredo to a better grip. "Who are you?" he demanded.

  "What are you talking about? You know me."

  "I knew Fratir Stephen. I'm not sure that's who you are."

  "Oh, it's me more or less," the man said. "But like you, I've been through a lot. Walked a new faneway, gained new gifts. So yes, things are revealed to me that are denied most. I can put my gaze far from me. But I'm not an espetureno or estrigo if that's your fear."

  "But you aren't here by coincidence."

  "No, I'm
not."

  "What do you want, then?"

  "To help you. To help Austra now and Anne later on."

  "Anne?" Cazio said. "How can you know where to find me and not know?"

  "Know what?"

  "Anne is dead."

  Stephen's eyes widened with what appeared to be genuine disbelief, and for the first time his new cockiness seemed to fail him.

  "How is that possible?" he said, speaking so low that Cazio could barely hear him. "There's something going on here I'm missing. But if Anne is dead…"

  He raised his voice. "We'll sort that out later. Cazio, I can help Austra. But you have to come with me."

  "Come with you?"

  "Get her," Stephen said. "Him, too."

  Cazio jerked his head around to see who the fratir was talking to, but all he saw was a weird wavering, like the air above hot stones. Then something wrapped itself firmly around his waist and lifted him into the air. He shrieked involuntarily and stabbed his blade into the invisible thing, but then something grabbed Acredo and wrenched the blade from his grasp.

  Then they were hurtling through the air, all three of them, born by the Kept, and there was nothing Cazio could do about it but curse and imagine what he was going to do to Stephen when he could get to him.

  After a while, Cazio finally had to give in to the fact that he was enjoying himself, at least a little. He had wondered often what it might be like to fly, and once the initial terror had worn off, it was exciting. They were whisked over the poelen and canals, covering in a bell what would have taken him days in the carriage. Eslen appeared in the distance, a toy castle far below them.

  "Hubris," Stephen said. "It's always the death of me. But I can't turn my eye in every direction at once, can I? Especially with the others interfering."

  "What are you talking about?"

  They plunged suddenly not toward Eslen but toward the dark necropolis south of it.

  "But he doesn't know about Austra," Stephen went on. "That'll be his undoing. He killed Anne for her power and didn't find it because it all went to Austra. She walked the same faneway as Anne-after her. I would have known that if I had thought about it for six breaths."

  Cazio tried to catch that thought. Austra did seem to have some of the same gifts as Anne. And the churchman-had he known somehow? Was his strange cutting of her connected to that? And did that have anything to do with what was wrong with Austra?

  It had to, didn't it?

  "See," Stephen whispered. "Hespero moves."

  Cazio's attention was suddenly drawn to the several hundreds of men fighting in front of the gates of Eslen-of-Shadows, but he only had a glimpse of that before they rushed down into the city itself, over the lead streets and into a mausoleum as large as some mansions. The Kept settled them in front of it. The two guards at the door started toward him, but then their eyes glazed over, and they sat down rather suddenly.

  Cazio suddenly found himself free. He started toward Stephen.

  "Don't," Stephen said. "If you want Austra alive and well, don't."

  With that he swung open the doors.

  Inside, on a large table, lay Anne. She was dressed in a black satin gown set with pearls, placed with her hands folded across her chest. Two women-one very young, the other a Sefry-and a man Cazio did not recognize were sitting with the body. The man stood as they entered and drew a broadsword.

  "I need my blade," Cazio told Stephen.

  "Pick it up, then," Stephen said.

  Cazio turned and found it lying on the ground. Austra was still in the Kept's invisible grip.

  "By the saints, what is this?" the man shouted. "Demons!"

  Stephen held up his hand. "Wait," he said. "There's no need for that."

  This wasn't what he had expected. This was where he had sensed the throne, not Anne, although it made perfect sense that she was down here, too.

  He could feel the sedos force pulsing just where she was.

  "How did she die?" he asked, a suspicion suddenly born in his mind.

  "Stabbed," the girl said, her eyes red from crying. "The Fratrex Prismo murdered her. There was so much blood…"

  "Stabbed where?"

  "Under the ribs, up into her heart," the Sefry woman said. "Then her throat was cut."

  Stephen stepped forward.

  "No, by the saints," the man shouted. "Who are you?"

  Stephen silenced him as he had the guards. It wouldn't hurt him permanently, but his thoughts would be too disordered to allow him to, say, move his limbs.

  He saw the line where Anne's throat had been cut, but it was puckered and white.

  Stephen felt a sort of coldness ringing in his ears.

  It was a scar.

  "Oh, screaming damned saints," Stephen sighed.

  Austra gave a sudden gasp behind him, and he felt a tremendous surge around him as the throne exploded into being.

  And the throne, Anne Dare rose up, shining with unnatural light, her face so beautiful and terrible that Stephen couldn't look on it.

  It was the face from his Black Marys.

  "Hespero," she whispered, and then, at the top of her lungs, screamed the name.

  She didn't even glance at him, or Cazio, or any other person in the room.

  "Qexqaneh," she said, and Stephen suddenly felt his control of the Vhelny utterly dissolve and heard the demon laughter in his ears. All the hair on his body suddenly stood up, and then Anne was in the demon's grip, flying, gone out of the crypt and into the darkling sky.

  Aspar still could feel the geos in him when they entered the high valley where he first had seen the Briar King. He reckoned that meant Winna wasn't there yet.

  Maybe Leshya wasn't bringing her there at all.

  Sir Roger and his men were there, however, camped and entrenched around what appeared to be a lodge of some sort, though Aspar knew it had been formed from living trees. He'd been in it; it was where he had found the Briar King sleeping.

  "I count seventeen," Fend said. "Four of them Mamres knights."

  Aspar nodded. "That's what I see."

  "I don't see your three friends."

  "No."

  "Always the conversationalist," Fend said. "Well, let's get this over with."

  "We're not in a hurry," Aspar said. "You just pointed out that Winna isn't here yet. Why should we charge down to their defended positions?"

  "You have a plan, then?"

  "What happened to your basil-nix?"

  "They're really quite fragile creatures once you get past their gaze. That's why I used it from a distance. Harriot's troops figured out what it was and poured arrows on it."

  Aspar nodded.

  "Was that your plan, to use the nix?"

  "If we had it, sure."

  "What now, then?"

  For answer, Aspar studied the distance and the play of the almost nonexistent breeze on the grass. Then he set a shaft to string and let it loose.

  One of the churchmen pitched back, grasping at the arrow in his throat.

  "Buggering saints!" Fend swore. "You've still got the eye, Aspar."

  "Now there are sixteen," he said as the men below scrambled for cover behind the crude barriers they had erected.

  "When they get tired of this," Aspar said, "they'll come up after us, fight on our ground. If Winna shows up before we're finished, we can always make your mad charge."

  "We can't take too long. The beasts will get hungry."

  "Send one or two down to hunt when it gets dark."

  "I like the way your mind works, Aspar," Fend said.

  We'll soon change that, Aspar thought.

  Fend sent an utin down that night. It didn't come back, but the next morning Aspar counted two fewer men below. The Mamres monks were all still there, though, so it wasn't as good a trade as might have been hoped for. Aspar watched through the day from the cover of the trees, looking for another opportunity to skewer someone, but the knight was being very cautious now.

  Toward sundown, he felt it all starting t
o catch up with him and found himself almost dozing, his eyes unwilling to keep open.

  He'd just closed them for a moment when he felt an odd turning. He looked down to see what was going on and realized that two of the Mamres monks and three mounted men were racing across the field toward the other entrance to the valley.

  "They're here!" Aspar shouted. He stood, took aim, and let go. One of the horsemen pitched off.

  Something went streaking by him. He saw it was Fend on the wairwulf. The remaining utin loped along behind him.

  Aspar fired again, missing a Mamres monk, but his third arrow found its mark in the man's leg, and he went rolling down. He had one more shot before they were out of range, and that hit another horseman.

  Grim, let Fend and his be enough, he thought. But Winna had Leshya and Ehawk, too.

  The other nine men were charging up the hill. Seven knights and two Mamres monks against him, the Vaix, and a greffyn.

  Aspar gritted his teeth and drew the cord, wishing he had more than five arrows left. But if wishes weighed anything, he'd have a heavy pack right now.

  The first one hit a knight and skipped off his armor, but the second one punched right through his breastplate, and now they were eight.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the greffyn bounding down the hill. Three of the knights turned their lances against it. The Mamres monks came on, dodging his next two arrows, but then the strange Sefry met them with his glistering feysword, and things went too quickly for him to follow even if he had had time to, which he didn't, because three armored mounted men were coming up on him fast.

  Aspar shot his last arrow from four kingsyards away at the knight on his far left, and it went through the fellow's armor as if it were cambric. He dropped his spear and slumped forward, and Aspar let fall the bow and ran as hard and fast as he could, putting the now masterless horse between himself and the other two mounted men. He grasped the spear as one of his pursuers dropped his lance, drew sword, and wheeled to meet the holter.

  Aspar caught him in midturn, ramming the sharp point into the armpit joint. The fellow hollered and went windmilling off his horse. The other fellow had ridden out a little farther and was turning for a proper charge. Aspar just then recognized that it was Harriot himself.